Progressive Christianity & The Battle for the Bible (Part 1)

So we're gonna begin lesson number 13. This is the final lesson in the book, although we might stretch it out for a week or two, maybe even three, but it's titled

The Battle for the Bible, Faithful Believers in the Face of Modernism.

So we're gonna be talking about what is called liberal Christianity sometime, well today it would be called progressive

Christianity, and that's in comparison to fundamentalism.

So you have fundamentalism, liberalism, and then there's another term, modernism.

So we're gonna be talking about all sorts of different men going back to the 1800s, then into the 1900s.

Men like B .B. Warfield, C .I. Schofield, Dwight Moody, and Billy Graham, and I don't know if it goes beyond Billy Graham, but that's the name that I saw, at least as far as the most modern name, but probably won't get to Graham in the 1950s and 1960s this week.

So the key passage is 2nd Timothy 3, 16, and 17, which a lot of people have these memorized, but this is a key verse on the inspiration and authority of the scripture.

Paul writes, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So what's the problem here that's being addressed? Basically, Christians that don't believe the

Bible, even pastors and churches and seminaries that don't believe the

Bible is true. Now what's the obvious kind of problem or maybe the gut reaction to hearing that?

If somebody says, well I'm a Christian but I don't believe the Bible, I mean that's a self -contradictory statement really.

I can you be a Christian and not believe the Bible? But this is what a lot of people want and you're gonna find this is true today, even in some segments of so -called evangelical

Christianity. And this is just gonna be more and more true as time goes on. There's people, they want religion, they want their church experience, they want to be called to have the title of Christian, but they don't want, they see the

Bible as a problem because the Bible refutes evolution, the

Bible tells people how they should live and you know people want to do whatever they want to do.

So they want they want Christianity without without the Bible. All right, so I'm just gonna read this first paragraph and then we'll get into some discussions.

Number one, the Bible comes under attack. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the philosophical underpinnings of Europe began to shift.

The rise of rationalism, which emphasized human reason, and empiricism, which focused on the scientific method, began to replace the religious traditionalism that had been prevalent throughout the

Middle Ages. This shift is known as the Enlightenment or the

Age of Reason. At the outset, this movement was primarily led by Christian philosophers and scientists, and that would be

Christian scientists, but it soon became dominated by those who claimed that the

Bible should be discarded. Armed with reason and science, some

Enlightenment thinkers openly questioned the inspiration, authority, and accuracy of the

Word of God. These skeptics challenged the veracity of Scripture. They denied the biblical accounts of supernatural events, arguing that miracles were either legends or coincidences that could be explained as the result of natural causes.

I'll just stop there for a second, and I remember years ago, when

I first started, you know, getting serious about reading the Bible, I wanted to learn as much as I could, so I would watch those

History Channel specials about, you know, the Bible uncovered, or whatever they called it, you know, and those

History Channel specials on Christianity and the Bible, all they did, and sometimes there were network things that came out around Easter, all they did was just attack the

Bible in the name of Christianity, some of the people on there. So, you know, they would explain that the plagues in Egypt were really, it really wasn't miraculous, it wasn't anything supernatural, they were just, yeah, coincidences.

It just kind of happened like that, and, you know, people back then were superstitious, so they attributed it to God.

So, and that's, I've come to realize, you know, a while ago, that anything on television, that's what you're gonna get on TV.

So, you expect, though, to come to a church and hear the truth in a church.

Okay, you expect that from TV, but in a church, you should hear the truth, but obviously, living in New England, you know that that's really not the case.

You have to find the right church where they actually have it in their statement of faith that we believe the

Scripture is true. So, it says, continuing, they also denied the original authorship of many parts of the

Scripture. For instance, they asserted that Moses did not write the first five books, the

Pentateuch, and they taught that the Gospels were not historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

This attack on the trustworthiness of the Bible caused some professing Christians to question whether Scripture should be regarded as the foundation for the

Christian faith. Some argued the basis for Christianity should be found in feelings of dependence on God.

Others looked to social activism and the church's influence in society.

So, who would be, have you ever encountered someone or a group, instead of following the

Bible, they really are led more about by feelings? Who would that apply to?

I would argue that, to be fair, most every charismatic

I've ever met, Pentecostals, Charismatics, they will say that the Bible is true.

I've never met one that denies the authority of Scripture, but I do find that instead of following the

Bible, they do tend to follow, you know, experience, feelings, emotions, revelations, and words of knowledge, or something that comes from outside of the

Bible, or that they claim to get directly from God. So, I do think there's a little truth to that. Anyone else?

Ray? Quakers? Yeah. Well, I don't know that much about the

Quakers, but I know for sure that the Shakers, and I know there is a little bit of a connection there, they looked for salvation within.

So, they really weren't following the Scripture. So, yeah, this might apply to Quakers, and Shakers, and groups like that.

That it was all about looking within. Christ is within you.

So, it became, you know, your feelings, how you feel, what you think about Christ, is the authority instead of what

Scripture says. Anyone else? Okay, those are some good responses.

As far as those groups that look to social activism, what's that called?

Yeah, social justice, or the social gospel. I think of Martin Luther King Jr.

is probably the most well -known person that was involved in this. I mean,

Martin Luther King Jr., because I know if anyone even perceives you might be saying something critical, they're gonna, you know, assume the worst.

So, let me just say, he did a lot of great things with the civil rights movement, and we can be thankful for the end of segregation and all the rest.

But, you know how he was portrayed. He was the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Even though in his writings, he denied the deity of Christ, he denied the resurrection of Christ, he denied the virgin birth of Christ, and if you look at all of his sermons, he's one of the most documented individuals of the 20th centuries.

You cannot find one single sermon where he actually preaches the biblical gospel. But, what was that?

It was activism. And again, you can appreciate some of the good things that came out of that, but it wasn't biblical

Christianity. And now, you have that today with, you know, the Reverend Al Sharpton, the

Reverend Jesse Jackson. It's activism, it's social justice, but they're not actually in a church preaching salvation from sin, right?

Like, that's not their message. It's one of social justice. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, and from what I understand, the men that I mentioned don't believe the actual gospel.

But, there are people that they would say they believe that the biblical gospel of salvation from sin, but they, yes, they do put activism ahead.

That's the main message. And that's really what, I don't know, half of the churches in New England, I would say.

It's a social gospel, not the biblical gospel of salvation in Christ.

So, you know, this congregation is probably pretty familiar with this because you hear it, but a lot of people aren't aware of it.

If you grew up in one of these churches, that's all you would know. All you know is what you hear.

So, unless you're reading the Bible for yourself, which, I mean, you should figure it out. But anyways, to continue this, let's see.

As a result, a new category emerged in church history. This is the category of liberal

Christianity, or theological liberalism. Broadly speaking, liberalism rejected the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture and redefined the church's mission in terms of things like social activism.

By the early 20th century, theological liberalism was prevalent in both

Europe and the United States, in addition to rejecting, number one, the inerrancy of Scripture.

Many proponents of liberalism also denied, number two, the deity of Christ. Number three, they denied the miracles recorded in the

Bible. Number four, they denied the substitutionary atonement of Christ's death on the cross.

And number five, they denied the bodily resurrection. And I've talked before about back in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, where, you know, this church was part of the

Congregationalist denomination. But the denomination said to the preachers, don't preach on the blood of Christ.

And they were removing the hymns from the hymn book where we would sing about the, you know, the power of the blood.

So they were telling the churches, do not, we don't believe that, do not preach on that.

So this church left the Congregationalist denomination, became independent. But now today, you really have two competing forms of Christianity.

I mean, one is apostate, and one has, you know, we're trying to remain faithful to the

Scriptures. So this is theological liberalism. Any questions on that?

Who was not aware of this? Who was not aware of this growing up?

Who learned this maybe later on in life? Yeah. Okay, so maybe about half.

Yeah, so the thing is, you're not gonna know unless, yeah, the pastor talks about it, or you're hearing it from someone else.

I mean, how would you know? So in response to these attacks, Bible -believing

Christians from various Protestant denominations, so this would be Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and more, banded together to defend the cardinal doctrines of the

Christian faith. And it says in the 1920s, these Christians became known as what?

Fundamentalists. Okay, now when you hear that word, fundamentalists, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Crackpots. There are some fundamentalists who are crackpots. That's true. There are some liberals who are crackpots.

There are crackpots in every group, but yes. Okay, Jerry Falwell.

Religious extremists. Legalism. Okay. If you listen to the fundamentalists, some of them were back -to -basics.

That's why they took the name in the first place. Right, and that's what it says here. In the 1920s, these

Christians became known as fundamentalists because they believed in the fundamental truths of the

Scriptures. So in that sense, by that definition, a fundamentalist is just another word for a

Bible -believing Christian. So here's what we need to know. There are really two types of liberals, and there are two types of fundamentalists.

The two types of liberals are, one, the obvious liberals who say the

Bible's not true. We don't believe in the miracles. Jesus didn't rise from the dead. I mean, that is a definite theological liberal, but there's another type of liberalism where a church, a pastor, they might believe the right things on paper.

Like if you looked at the church's doctrinal statement, you'd be like, oh yeah, I agree with that, but what they preach and their practice is totally different.

So this is becoming really common. So again, they believe the right things technically on paper, but what they say seems to contradict what they believe.

And then they just end up talking out of both sides of their mouths, so they're trying to please everybody. I mean, that would be a different form of liberalism.

But likewise, there's two types of fundamentalists. There are the fundamentalists who, yeah, they just believe the fundamental basics of Christianity.

They're just Bible -believing Christians. No big deal. But then there is the bad type of fundamentalists, like maybe

Barb says, the crackpots, where, here's my perception of it, just,

I could mention a few names, but it's not necessarily helpful here, but they basically fight with everybody.

They can have fellowship with another pastor and agree with them on 99%, but if there's one difference,

I mean, they'll get nasty, they'll yell and shout and scream and break fellowship over any little thing.

I heard of one pastor, he, someone took a different position on the rapture, so instead of being pre -trib, they were post -trib.

No, he's not saved. Over that, he agreed with everything else they agreed with, but because they had a different view of the rapture,

I don't even think you're a Christian anymore. I mean, that's pretty radical in my mind.

But yeah, this is the bad type of fundamentalists, where, I mean, they will fight anyone, even themselves, with the drop of a hat over any little thing.

And that type of church is exhausting to belong to, because they have a long list of what makes an acceptable

Christian, and you're going to hear about it if you violate any of it.

Yeah, I mean, those people might actually fit, because you know me,

I don't like this idea of calling other Christians Pharisees and legalists.

I don't think that's a good thing in general, but there are some people who actually do sort of fit that description.

Yeah, and if you're a part, if anyone has ever been a part of a church like that, if you step out of line, even one,

I mean, you could get kicked out of the church like that, or at least you would be threatened like that.

Whereas a church that really believes in grace, yeah, someone might actually commit a very serious offense, but they're given a chance to repent, and they're not actually looking for a fight.

They're not actually looking to boot people out over every little thing. So, I mean, thankfully,

I've never been part of that, but they do exist, and it seems that, yeah, some of you might know from experience.

It's a pretty rare thing these days, at least in this region, but it does exist. So, all that to say there's a good type of fundamentalism, where you just believe the basics of the faith, and then there's the bad type.

Okay, so these people became, now let's turn to Jude, the book of Jude. Now, I do want to add there is something to be said about fighting for the faith.

Jude is a book about contending earnestly, or fighting for the faith, and here in the book it says, yes, these

Christians became known as fundamentalists, and they were willing to earnestly contend for the faith, and notice they came from not only the

Baptists, because Baptists tend to be, oh yeah, that's the way the Baptists are, but notice in the book it says there were

Methodists like this. There were Presbyterians, so it wasn't just the Baptists. Every denomination has, really, every denomination has their liberals and their fundamentalists, and the bigger the denomination, the bigger the divide, but is fighting for the faith biblical?

Well, it is, but of course you have to do it biblically. Jude, let's just read the first few verses in the book of Jude.

Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the

Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Beloved, I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, but I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the

Saints. Why? Because certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our

God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our

Lord Jesus Christ. So you notice that Jude wanted to write a happy, positive epistle, saying, you know, we're all

Christians, let's talk about our common faith and how wonderful everything is, but he realized the seriousness of the moment.

It's like, I wanted to write a letter like that, but I found it necessary to, you know, exhort you, to stir you up that you need to fight for the faith, because they were in a dire situation.

Because these men crept in unnoticed. Who are these men? Well, he goes on to talk about,

I mean, basically apostates and false teachers. So again, there's a good type of fighting for the faith.

There's a bad type of fighting for the faith. Okay, so the good type,

I would argue, is what we went through last year, where the churches banded.

There was a clear movement of false teaching that people were trying to bring into churches, and the churches finally banded together and said, no, we're not going to allow you to do that.

So that was a good type of fighting for the faith. We were doing what Jude said to do.

The bad type would be if I'm pre -millennial and I find out, you know, one of our churches that we used to fellowship, now they're amillennial, and we're gonna condemn them because, you know, we have this difference, and we're gonna fight them because they have this difference in theology.

Well, I might disagree, and I might feel strongly about what I believe is true, but you don't want to be fighting other churches on, you know, what we might call those secondary issues, even though I think that's actually a very important issue.

But I'm not willing to break fellowship over something like that. If you deny the deity of Christ, that I'll break fellowship over.

If you serve communion, you know, once every week as opposed to that's not something to divide over how often to serve communion or even baptism by sprinkling.

I have very strong views on that. I'm a Baptist in that sense, but I believe

Presbyterians and some Reformed people who baptize babies, as much as I disagree with that,

I think they really love the Lord and they're convinced of their position. So yeah, the bad type of fundamentalism is you're just fighting with everybody, and you don't want to do that.

Any questions so far? Do you agree? Okay. Yeah, so Jude goes on and he talks about the issues of his day, and you know, the things that he was going through, we're going through them now.

So back to the book, and I think this is in my book and not yours, but it says, in this lesson we will survey the ideological battle that took place in the early 20th century, especially in the

United States, between the theological liberals, who the book calls the modernists, as opposed to the

Bible believing fundamentalists. Okay, who's familiar with this term modernism?

Okay, so in this sense, modernism and liberalism are being used interchangeably, but there's different degrees.

Okay, so the discussion question, let's look again at 2nd Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

Just go back there, or you know, if you have it memorized or you're pretty well fixed on what it says, you don't have to turn there.

What does the Bible claim for itself, based on this passage? What does the

Bible claim for itself? Okay, okay, so the first claim the

Bible makes for itself is that it is inspired of God, and that doesn't mean inspired in the sense that, you know,

I went to a concert and the music was so, I just felt inspired. I mean, I get inspired every once in a while to do something.

This means something very different though. Yeah, okay, yeah, thank you.

Yes, all scripture is inspired, not parts, not only the things

Jesus said, but the rest of it isn't. No, all the scripture is inspired, and it's important to point out that at this time, a lot of the

New Testament had been written at this point, but Paul, I would say first and foremost,

Paul's Bible would have been the Old Testament Scriptures. So, you know, the guys like Andy Stanley, who wanted to detach, unhitch from the

Old Testament, and kind of set, you know, Old Testament's kind of extreme. We don't believe. No, Paul says it's all inspired, which means

God breathed. It is the very Word of Almighty God. All of it,

Marcus. So you're saying the construction of the

Greek implies that it's saying all the scripture that is inspired is profitable.

Okay, I've never heard that. I'll take your word for it. I just heard it.

Now, whether that was a true statement or not, but wouldn't you think that, I mean, you know that before we had the 66 books, there was scripture as well.

Yeah, if you're ever in a church where they're talking about the Old Testament God, as opposed to the

New Testament God, I mean, you better get out of there. Your point is absolutely correct, and very well clarifies the point that the

Old Testament, there's just no doubt in Paul's mind, that all of the

Old Testament is inspired by God. And the meaning that set canon was because does this go with the inspired scripture that is already established?

Every New Testament book that was set into the canon was based on whether it was the cohesive whole, and did not disagree with any of the original inspired scripture of God, the love,

Moses, etc. But this is not the debate. It's just that your point, when

Paul wrote these words, there was no doubt in his mind, but he wrote these words before John wrote the

Revelation. The term scripture simply means, like the scriptures means the writings, like we know, we assume when we're talking about it in this context, you hear the scriptures, we're talking about the 66 books of the

Bible, but that term just means the right, and there's all sorts of writings out there, because you have the

Apocrypha, which, you know, the Roman Catholic Church says, well, those are inspired too, and that's obviously a difference, because we don't believe the

Apocrypha is inspired. But yes, it's, I guess it's, it's presumed here that it's the 66 books.

I mean, that's, that's what we believe, but there's other writings, but we know the 66 books of the

Bible are inspired by God, and they are profitable for doctrine.

So it's profitable for teaching. Even the Song of Solomon is profitable for teaching.

All of it is. It's also profitable for reproof.

What's reproof? Well, reproof, rebuke,

I think would be another way of putting it. If somebody's espousing something that's false,

I mean, the Bible is useful to say, hey, you're wrong, and here's what's right.

Yeah. I mean, rebuking people is not something that is done a lot these days, but sometimes people need, especially maybe the false teachers that you just saw here,

I mean, they needed to be rebuked. So told they're wrong. And then the correction is, is what's next.

And then instruction and righteousness. There's a statement. One doctrine is what is right.

Reproof what is wrong. Correction, how to make it right. Instructional righteousness, how to keep it right.

I like that. Yes, Marcus. Maybe exhort falls in there as a clear command that we're supposed to do is exhort one another.

Exhorting to, you know, motivate people to make urge and appeal to get them to act.

Yep. Encouraged. I think encouraged is along in there too.

Language is strange. You don't always have clear translations between one language and another.

Right. Well, let's answer the second question. So we see the claim that the

Bible makes for itself. How does that claim differ from the skeptical attacks made by the theological liberals?

Okay. So the Bible says about itself, all of it is inspired. It's God breathed.

How's that different from what the liberals were saying? Right. Yeah.

I'm glad you brought that up because the way I started in this, I listened to the message on this by Nathan, professor

Nathan here, who put the book together. He said that liberals, he just came right out and said, and I think

I said this, they don't believe the Bible. Which is a fair statement, but you realize they, they do believe parts of the

Bible. For example, I heard someone say a week or two ago, they said,

Jesus is teaching. And I don't really agree with this, but they said, Jesus is teachings can be summarized in two things.

Love God, love one another, you know, the, the first commandment of the law and the second commandment.

So all of Jesus's teachings can be summarized and love God, love your neighbor. That aside, which again,

I don't necessarily agree with that. You can, I think you could go up to a agnostic.

You could go up to even an atheist and say, Hey, what do you think about this statement? You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I bet you a lot of atheists would say, yeah, I believe that. I think that's good. People of other religions would say that.

I think, I think a Muslim could probably say, love God, love your neighbor as yourself. I suspect a lot of religious people could affirm that.

So theological liberals do believe parts of the Bible, but yeah, they basically pick and choose and the parts they reject are the parts that are either, you know, either quote unquote debunked by science, which they're not really debunked or yeah, they make them uncomfortable or, you know, they want to do something.

The Bible says they're not supposed to. I don't believe that. You know, it's very convenient or it's, it just flies in the face of 20th, 20th century culture, 21st century culture, right?

Yeah. One thing liberals will do is they may say that we make, let's see, what am

I trying to say here? They won't say that they don't believe certain parts of the

Bible, but they'll say is not that we don't believe it, but we just don't know if it's true or not.

True. This part of the Bible isn't true. Others will take maybe, yeah, I mean, we don't know.

I'm not saying it's not true, but we just, we just don't know. So we're not going to really pay attention because we don't know.

That sounds, it almost sounds noble and humble to say, you know,

I'm just not sure. But if it's a core teaching of Christianity and you're not sure,

I mean, you probably shouldn't be behind the pulpit. I don't know, but if you're not sure what, what's being taught, okay.

Any other comments on the difference between what the Bible says about itself or theological liberals?

Uh, one thing about theological, they, they do not let, they like G here's what I've heard so many times.

They say, I like Jesus. Oh, I love Jesus, but that apostle

Paul, who I, they, they do not like Paul who's heard that. I mean, that's extremely common.

Uh, you know, Beth Moore was a popular, uh, and I would kind of put her in the liberal, you know, the moderate liberal category, not full blown because she affirms the authority of scripture.

But she was, she posted that one time, made a statement that caused a lot of waves and that people sort of reassessing whether or not they were supporting her ministry.

I know a church where they took all of her books off the bookshelf after she said something like that.

But she said, I follow Jesus. I don't follow Paul. And I forget the exact, which, you know, is in theory true.

Like we are Christians. We're not followers of Paul, but in her,

I forget exactly her wording, but she was basically saying, don't quote Paul to me. I don't really care what

Paul said. I'm just going to follow Jesus. Well, I mean, except that Paul wrote the majority of the new

Testament. So, I mean, you kind of run into a little problem there, but yeah.

And there is a verse where Paul says, follow me as I follow

Christ. Right. So, and that's scripture, which is part of the all scripture.

Yeah. And just to say, and I want to be fair to people, but I don't know if this doesn't occur to them or what, but so I like Jesus.

It's just some of his apostles I have an issue with. Yeah. But Jesus never wrote any of this.

You're getting it all from the apostles. They're the ones who wrote the new Testament. So, it just doesn't make sense to me. Well, there's also a difference.

There are people like what you said, don't quote Paul to me because I don't want to listen to it. And then there's being really honest and saying that there are parts of scripture that make me uncomfortable, that make me wrestle, that make me, you know, you're not saying you don't agree with the scripture.

You're saying that this is something that you are struggling with so that you can learn.

Right. And there's a difference between people that are trying to learn from it, but admitting that they're struggling with that passage and people that are like, no, that's just, that's just not what they're saying.

Yeah. I think it's important to know the difference because you need to let people ask their questions.

Otherwise, how are they going to know? Right. Yes. And people are open. You know, you're more than welcome to ask questions.

None of us have it all figured out, but hopefully we're not denying the scripture or we don't have some big issue.

But who's read through the Bible in your life? You read a passage. You're like, ouch, that's thought that's convicting me right now.

Or that that's talking about me, right? Yeah. Hello. That's the same to disagree with each other.

Right. And you have to keep in mind that if you think scripture is disagreeing with itself, it's because we're not understanding something.

It's not because scripture is wrong. Right. Yeah. You ever run across a passage that seems to be contradicting another passage.

I could answer those questions somewhat. I'm sure many of you could address those. And if we can't, there are apologists out there who make their living doing that and they can answer it.

But there are answers. Okay. Let's just start this next section. Princeton theology.

Who sees that? Okay. So, I mean, how long ago is this?

That Princeton was taking a strong stand for biblical truth. It wasn't any time recently.

Okay. As theological liberalism began to spread in the mid 18th century, the

Lord raised up a formidable defense at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Princeton Seminary was started in 1812 by Archibald Alexander, who lived from 1772 to 1851, and he served as the school's first chair of systematic theology.

Notable 19th century faculty members included Charles Hodge, A.

A. Hodge, and Benjamin B. Warfield. Okay. Have you heard of these names?

Hodge. Yeah. B. B. Warfield is a pretty well -known figure in later church history.

Charles Hodge lived from 1797 to 1878 and is best known for the systematic theology that he published in 1872.

Hodge taught at Princeton for more than 50 years. During that time, he staunchly defended the

Christian faith from attack. A. A. Hodge, who lived from 1823 to 1886, was the son of Charles and was named after Princeton Seminary's first president,

Archibald Alexander. So that's the A. A. He became a professor of systematic theology at Princeton Seminary when his father died in 1878.

He too defended the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Okay, I think this is the first time we've seen this word, so it would be a good idea to point this out.

Inerrancy. Who's heard of this term? The Bible is inerrant.

Yeah, and the other word that often goes along with it is Bible is infallible.

Okay, let's define these terms. What does it mean that something is inerrant?

Without errors. Without error. You agree with that? Yeah, you've heard to err is human, right?

Like err, you think of err or error. So if something is inerrant, yeah, you're saying there are no errors.

So we believe that the Bible is without error. And the other term, the

Bible is not only inerrant, but it's infallible. So what's the difference between inerrancy and infallibility?

Yeah, one means inerrancy. It's not wrong. Infallibility means it cannot be wrong.

Why can the scripture, why can it not be wrong? Because it's God's word and God can't be wrong.

Now the one rub in here that I have to mention, because I want people to not have a simplistic understanding of this, and we need to be equipped with this knowledge that is a

Bible translation inerrant and infallible? I don't want to pick, because no matter what version

I pick, someone has that version. So whatever. Someone's going to be upset about that, but whatever.

Let's pick something that nobody has. The Amplified Bible. No one has that one, right?

Is the Amplified Bible infallible? I would say not necessarily, because the people at the publishing house could make a mistake, could be an honest mistake.

Like you heard of the adulterer's Bible? Who's heard of that? The adulterer's Bible. Yeah, they printed some

Bible and just the guy at the printing press putting in the letters, thou shalt not commit adultery.

Well, he left out the not. Well, that Bible was fallible, but that doesn't mean the original writings of Moses.

So printers can make errors, but God's word is without. There could be typos.

New versions that are coming out, like the Passion Translation. The guy who put out the

Passion Translation claims that he received revelation from God, so he's putting his own extra words in there because he thinks that God is fixing the

Greek and giving him additional revelation. Well, that Bible is not inerrant and infallible, and neither is the

Jehovah's Witnesses New World Translation. I would argue the message, which is a paraphrase, it's not even really a translation.

A paraphrase would not be infallible. All that to say this, the

King James, New King James, even the NIV, NASB, these are very reliable.

There might be one thing here and there that could be a scribal error somewhere in church history, but these are dependable translations.

And the parts that are in question are so minuscule and it doesn't really change doctrine.

So you could argue over this verse or that verse because different translations may be rendered a different way.

But that's not anything that should cause a person to question the authority of Scripture.